DOSbox etc & old ones from the garbage can.

Tuomas · Sun 07/02/2010 18:58:53

So I was wondering...

I just got Victor Loomes again. It's a German freeware game, probably made as a promotional game for a company, I understand Telecommando games were such ones.

But I needed a DOSbox to execute it. No wonder, and I expected no less. The last platform to function with this is Win98 according to the site I got it from. I remember enjoying this game, but never really finishing it as my German used to suck

So now I'm playing this for practise. And to finally discover the case of stolen diamonds.

I need emulators to beat half the games I used to play back in the days. I'm part of the Ultima6 Project Britannia just so that I could live the world again, because let's face it, DOSbox isn't really all that good. You'd need the proper equipment ie. my old Amiga...

But everyone who has Vista on their computer should know how hard it is to get some games to play on it, especially old ones. And it's not made any easier by the publishers. Now I know there are a lot of old school nerds here who'd enjoy them old games too... But to me it seems as if the developers are trying to make us play only new games. The old ones can be thrown in the bin. As is everything made in the early 90's were made obsolete. It's like throwing away music or paintings once they get old. Playing old and modest games is made possible only by private developers. What the hell is wrong with people? They could as well drag money out of the old games. Sell them again, but make them work properly on Vista par exemple. Some might do yeah, but most of the stuff is just plain shit. And to be frank, DOSbox isn't very good an emulator. Better than nothing though.

It's a problem I face every now and then. I feel like playing stuff that still raises nostalgic feelings in me. But nothing supports my wish

It's as if they didn't matter anymore...

LimpingFish · Sun 07/02/2010 19:17:10

I find DOSbox works fine, as long as I'm running it through a front-end like D-Fend Reloaded.

Most games are configured automatically through it.

abstauber · Sun 07/02/2010 19:18:50

well, Dosbox works most of the time for me. But one day I wanted to play Little Big Adventure (Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure) and... even though it was playable it wasn't fun at all.
VDMSound wasn't an option as well, but using VMWare finally did the trick for me.

Why not installing a fresh Window98 guest in VMware player, which is free

Damien · Sun 07/02/2010 19:25:59

Well, if it works on Win98, you could try running it with VDM Sound.

I don't have a problem with how games work with DosBox, but I don't like how they sound. Well, not a problem actually since I managed to find an old IBM P100 with an ESS audiodrive soundcard for those games.

nihilyst · Sun 07/02/2010 20:05:35

I find DosBOX working for all the old games. However, with graphic heavy games (and sometimes with not so heavy ones, too), it's kinda slow with me.

If I wanted to play many old games, I probably would set up an old computer system.

And yeah, the old promotional adventure games were fun. There's tons of them, some of them not bad, either.

Leon · Sun 07/02/2010 20:40:40

You might want to try Microsoft Virtual PC. Although DosBox works most of the time, I find MSVPC emulating better. You have to use your own genuine original OS with it and you can also install Windows95 with it.

Works for most of the old games although you need quite a 'heavy' machine to get it to run smoothly. Unless it's the only thing running on the machine, then it's ok.

xenogia · Sun 07/02/2010 22:29:37

Can't say I have much of a problem with DosBox at all of late. It's becoming quite the formidable emulator

If I can play Phantasmagoria 1 and 2, Under a Killing Moon series and Gabriel Knights 2 then I'm happy. And it can play these games brilliantly

InCreator · Sun 07/02/2010 22:42:04

For me, Dosbox has failed on some early 3D games, such as 3drealms' games (Duke Nukem, Blood, etc) and Carmageddon.

Not directly "failed" but emulation is too slow for proper gameplay. Especially in Carmageddon.
Then again, some other 3D games, such as my lately rediscovered Dungeon Keeper runs perfectly.

Also, I second on D-fend Reloaded. Using Dosbox without it is pure masochism.
Some games have issues with my video card vs. 256 color mode vs. Windows 7 though - producing a crazy, inverted palette... Simplest fix to it is to open screen resolution adjustment window on desktop and leave it open when I start the game. Works like a charm.

Tuomas · Sun 07/02/2010 23:54:56

Exactly my point. You have tons of rival programs, and all of them work, but the problem is having to use these peograms, when adding a DOS-like OS to Vista should not be too hard. Yet they choose not to.

xenogia · Sun 07/02/2010 23:57:22

Quote from: InCreator on Sun 07/02/2010 22:42:04
For me, Dosbox has failed on some early 3D games, such as 3drealms' games (Duke Nukem, Blood, etc) and Carmageddon.

Not directly "failed" but emulation is too slow for proper gameplay. Especially in Carmageddon.
Then again, some other 3D games, such as my lately rediscovered Dungeon Keeper runs perfectly.

Also, I second on D-fend Reloaded. Using Dosbox without it is pure masochism.
Some games have issues with my video card vs. 256 color mode vs. Windows 7 though - producing a crazy, inverted palette... Simplest fix to it is to open screen resolution adjustment window on desktop and leave it open when I start the game. Works like a charm.

I've had that issue with the inverted palette also, pain in the ass really. But windowing it is fine

InCreator · Mon 08/02/2010 00:23:59

Try the resolution thing (right click on desktop, "screen resolution")

It's strange, but it works. If it fails due some reason -- make sure you closed everything else that isn't reso/game/dosbox related, and that you didn't actually minimize resolution window - just switched to dosbox/d-fend.

Also, switching drawing mode from "surface" to "ddraw" or vice versa from d-fend helps too sometimes. Fullscreen ahoy!

xenogia · Mon 08/02/2010 01:57:49

Will do I'll try it out

HammerBlade · Mon 08/02/2010 06:34:11

You said DOSbox doesn't work great for you...if it happens to be a speed issue, does increasing the CPU cycles with CTRL+F12 or decreasing with CTRL+F11 help?

Sound can be an issue at times, though. I've been trying to configure the sound for Laura Bow 2 on DOSBox, but I can't get sound that isn't computer speaker sound or a really bizzare MIDI patch configuration. What's weird is that it worked relatively well the last time I had DOSBox installed...must be doing something wrong now.

Anyway.

OneDollar · Mon 08/02/2010 12:48:37

I love DOSBox, and it's getting better. A couple of years ago I could only get Toonstruck to work on a virtual Windows 95 machine. Now it runs flawlessly in DOSBox. I only have two problems with it at the moment, in Windows 7 I get the pallet bug that has been mentioned (will also be trying InCreator's fix) and in Windows XP the audio jitters (goes high pitched) for half a second every minute or two. It does this on all games no matter what the audio options are set to or what CPU cycles I run the game at. Anyone know of a fix?

The problem with supporting DOS in modern Windows is that the underlying architecture is so different. Everything changed with Windows XP, and changed again with Vista and 7. It's also a bit of a niche market, you can understand MS not wanting to invest time supporting other companies 15+ year old games.

Leon · Mon 08/02/2010 13:59:00

Can anyone then tell me how to run Nightwatch in DosBox without crashing after the intro?

OneDollar · Mon 08/02/2010 20:14:49

Quote from: Leon on Mon 08/02/2010 13:59:00
Can anyone then tell me how to run Nightwatch in DosBox without crashing after the intro?

In short, no. Can you actually get the intro, or does it just get as far as I could (asks do I want to view the intro, crashes whatever I put in the box)?

InCreator · Tue 09/02/2010 03:46:05

Dos-era AGS games run often horribly bad in DosBox.
Main issue seems to be digital sound.

zabnat · Tue 09/02/2010 11:49:18

Quote from: Leon on Sun 07/02/2010 20:40:40
You might want to try Microsoft Virtual PC. Although DosBox works most of the time, I find MSVPC emulating better. You have to use your own genuine original OS with it and you can also install Windows95 with it.

Works for most of the old games although you need quite a 'heavy' machine to get it to run smoothly. Unless it's the only thing running on the machine, then it's ok.

I agree. If you have a modern processor that supports virtualization and you have a decent amout of memory, you should be fine. I'm really happy with Virtual PC as I finally got Discworld 2 running. There are some configs/tutorials to get it working on DosBox, but I didn't get it to work properly. With VDMsound I got it running, but I could only move mouse in the left upper quarter of the screen. Now it's running on Win98 in Virtual Box just fine. So if you just got a brand new gaming rig with Windows 7 pro or up, this is the solution for many of the older games.

strazer · Tue 23/02/2010 08:35:06

Btw, ScummVM also supports Discworld 2.

kaputtnik · Tue 23/02/2010 11:23:12

Who not simply get an old notebook cheap off your favourite second hand platform and make it your DOS and Win95 gaming tool? I got a P133 Toshiba as a present one day, it serves all my DOS gaming needs, also in terms of authenticity.